


never wanted a lover (always wanted to be loved)

by coffeeandchocolate



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Aromantic Character, Aromanticism, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Casual Sex, F/M, Friendship, Late Night Conversations, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 02:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18326795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeandchocolate/pseuds/coffeeandchocolate
Summary: Between them, Dick Grayson and Donna Troy have enough love for the entire world. That doesn't mean they'll ever understand romance.





	never wanted a lover (always wanted to be loved)

When Dick was lonely or when something bothering him wasn’t something he could talk to Bruce about, it was Donna he sought out. He loved Tim and Damian, but they were his little brothers – he was supposed to have the answers, not just dump his problems on them. He loved Wally and Roy, but they had families now and more important things to worry about than his anxieties. He loved Barbara, but their relationship hadn’t been the same since they’d broken up. But there had never been much Dick couldn’t share with Donna, because she was Donna. She’d been there through everything and he was more grateful for that than words could describe.

Somewhere along the line, they’d started sleeping together, and wasn’t _that_ just strange to consider? It had started when they’d wound up at his apartment after a mission with the League, somehow simultaneously bone weary and too wired to sleep, and put in an order for pizza from his couch. After she’d tossed her phone onto the coffee table, they’d started laughing about something, and they’d kept laughing, unable to stop until they’d run out of breath and fallen against each other, wheezing for air. Then the laughter had faded to a companionable silence; Donna had grinned at him, eyes gleaming; and Dick didn’t know whether it had been him to lean in or her or both of them simultaneously, but then they’d been kissing, his hands cupping her face and hers splayed against his back, kissing and not breaking apart until the doorbell rang and Donna snagged a fifty from Dick’s wallet, vaulted over the couch, answered the door, and returned to her seat holding the pizza box.

Even stranger than the kiss itself was how that hadn’t been the end of it, just a weird, solitary incident that they could chalk up to exhaustion or exultation at surviving.

After eating, they’d gone to bed with every intention of falling asleep and getting the rest they needed. But even after the food and laughter and time to wind down, they’d still been on edge, the both of them, trembling for reasons unknown. So they’d turned to face each other and reassured each other physically until they could stop thinking and just rest. And that much…it became almost habitual.

It wasn’t romantic.

Nothing else about their relationship changed. They never talked about what it meant or what their expectations were. They still worked together, still teased each other, still made time to grab dinner together once a week. They just sometimes – not even often – added sex to the picture. And even though he’d never been good at casual sex, it was _Donna_ , and that made it better. She was the one person, save for his family, that really _got_ him. The one person with whom he was comfortable even considering asking the questions he’d wondered for years, through just about every kiss and touch and expression of affection he’d received or given. Maybe that was why being with her – no matter how – never felt unnatural. So it had continued just like that for months until he could finally muster up the nerve to talk about something meaningful.

“Do you…enjoy this?” he asked her now, in the early hours before dawn after they’d finished and she’d curled up to rest her head against his chest, a warm and welcome pressure. “I mean…sex?”

Kory would have laughed and assured him that she did, green eyes gleaming as she added, “Why do it otherwise?”

Barbara would have rolled her eyes fondly and shoved at his shoulder, noticing in the back her head that he hadn’t used an article and dismissing the absence as irrelevant. _“Yes, Boy Wonder, you’re very good. If you want something new, just say it.”_

Roy would have tensed up and immediately asked if Dick meant that _he_ wasn’t enjoying it, if there was anything he wanted differently, and not relaxed until Dick had assured him that wasn’t it.

Donna just sat up in bed and stretched out, tilted her head and thought about the question.

“It feels nice,” she said. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Dick suspected she might have been blushing, just a little. He sat up, too, watching her closely. “And I…I like that it lets me feel close to people. But…it’s not really…”

She struggled to find the words and Dick waited patiently, even as relief flooded through him, because he was pretty sure he knew where she was going with this, and that felt better than he could have ever have imagined. Finally, Donna said, “I don’t exactly _get it._ What makes people look at someone, anyone, and want to sleep with them.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised – this was _Donna._ She’d always understood him, understood all those things he’d felt but for which he’d never had the words to describe. Why should this be any different? But somehow, he _was_ surprised, and in a better way than he thought he’d ever experienced.

“I don’t, either,” he said, and Donna was startled into a smile, teeth flashing white in the dark, jaw unclenching and face relaxing.

“Really?”

He nodded. “It…it’s a way to let people know I care about them, you know? And it’s not that I _mind,_ really, it’s just mostly –”

“Like a culture you don’t even understand!” Donna completed, voice rising a little at the end with excitement. He nodded again, a grin breaking out across his own face.

“Yeah, exactly.”

“And…” Donna’s smile faded a little as she dragged in a breath. Her voice lowered to something barely over a whisper, something Dick had to strain to hear. “You remember when we thought about dating? When we were teenagers? And decided we shouldn’t because we were best friends and romance should feel different somehow?”

He nodded.

“It’s never felt different,” she admitted. “Not with anyone since then. Not in any way that seems meaningful. So I kind of just figured…well, you know I love you, Dick. I can’t imagine loving anyone _more_ and I figured I might never feel whatever it is that’s _different,_ I’m not wasting my life chasing that. I’d rather just spend my time with you.”

It wasn’t a confession of love, exactly. Not in any sense other than the way they’d loved each other since they’d been thirteen. But Dick couldn’t remember the last time someone saying those three little words had meant so much to him.

“Well,” he managed. “The feeling is mutual.”

She laughed a bit and grabbed a pillow, hugging it close. “So…no romance in the horizon for you, either? You love more people – and vice versa – then anyone I know!”

Dick shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. He’d always considered love an action more than an emotion, what he did more important than what he felt. None of the people he’d been with in capital _R_ Relationships seemed to perceive it like that. It had ended with Kory, with Roy, with Barbara – with all those people he’d thought for a moment he could have fallen in love with – because no matter what he did or how hard he tried, they felt there was something missing. He hadn’t been enough for them. And if it hadn’t worked with any of them…

Finally, he said, “I don’t think I can love anyone like that. I don’t even think I know what that means.”

Donna sighed. The sound was somewhere between wistful and relieved, and it was almost the perfect vocalization of the feelings swirling around within Dick’s chest. “Me neither.”

And so they continued.

Maybe this was romance, then, or the closest they’d ever achieve – the two of them, loving each other as much as it was possible to love anyone and sometimes crawling into bed together when they craved touch because why not? What did it matter what it was or what they called it when they were just being them? It was love and it was sex and they made each other feel good. There was no jealousy over anyone else or pressure to do anything they weren’t sure they wanted to do. It was just him and Donna, the way they’d always been.

That didn’t mean it was always easy.

“Do you think…we’re missing out on something?” Donna asked him another night, as they sat in her kitchen with steaming mugs of tea. She wrapped her hands around her mug, letting the heat seep into her palms. “By doing this, I mean.”

“No,” he said, immediately, fiercely, and he was dimly surprised to recognize that that was true. All those years he’d spent wondering that same question, those years spent wondering if there was something broken inside him because he couldn’t maintain a relationship with any of those people he loved and had loved so much, and it was _Donna_ asking it aloud, tentative and plaintive, about him and her both, that gave him an answer. “Absolutely not.”

He didn’t know the words to describe how he was – how _they_ were. He suspected that that was at least because he’d just been too afraid to look for them, too caught up in the memories of how lost and confused when he’d first started to realize he might not be like most of the people around him. But he didn’t need to describe anything now, just to reassure his oldest friend, and that was something he knew how to do. Since he’d always preferred movement to words, he reached across the table and took Donna’s hand. Even though it wasn’t exactly the answer to the question she’d asked, he said, “There is _nothing_ wrong with us.”

Donna managed a laugh. It was strained, but real.

“Wow,” she said. “I…thanks, Dick.”

“You and me, Don,” he replied, tightening his hold on her hand. “Always.”

Dick didn’t know how to describe how he felt things. But right then, holding Donna’s hand in the late hours of the night, he knew he didn’t need to. The explanation didn’t matter, but _they did._ And for now, that would be enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> So when I originally posted this, it was anonymously. And that's because I usually post most fics that pertain to sexuality, consent, etc. anonymously for the sake of my own comfort. And this one, centering as it does around Dick/Donna - a ship that most people are so opposed to - made me even more nervous. Dick has always come across as very aro to me, I headcanon most characters as ace, and since there are so few fics involving aspec characters, this felt important to post at the time, and now I think I'm ready to have it associated with my name.


End file.
